Art & Entertainment

Almost Famous

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Almost Famous
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Cameron Crowe's Oscar-winning Almost Famous does a double—it tells the'coming of age' tale of a 15-year-old rock fan's slow rise to near fame andmaturity. But it also presents an ode to the '70s rock and roll scene—the timeof transition when the 'war was ending' and the genre was losing its hard-boilededge.

The movie is Cameron's semi-autobiography, which allows him to come up with somefunny sequences. William Miller (Patrick Fugit), a rock fan and writer, is on anassignment from the Rolling Stone magazine to write on the Stillwater, an up and coming(fictionalised for the movie) band of that period. Miller has hidden his age from themagazine's editors; he is also trying to get away from a sensitive but slightlygoosey college teacher mother (played by Francis Mcdormand), who wants him to pursue acareer in law. The two worlds collide in a classic mix-up when Russell Hammond (BillyCrudup), Stillwater's lead guitarist, as crazy and confused as any '70s rockstar, encounters Miller's mom on phone. When she tells him, amongst other things,that 'he still has a chance', the cocky guitarist ends up uttering 'yesm-a-m' in the classic schoolboyish manner. Russell's personal and professionallife is also typical of that period—he vacillates from a genuine concern for music tothe cheap exhibitionism that finally sounded rock and roll's death-knell. Caught at ayoung age, in documenting the musicians and their troubled times, Miller ends up strikingan emotional bond with Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), the leader of the 'band aids',another phenomena of the period. These were girls, who hung around rock stars for the sakeof music, sex and sometimes love. Penny's fate is an archive of the way thesenowhere-girls arrived and vanished from the rock and roll scene. It also provides theintensely human angle (Lane is in love with Russell) that lay behind all the madness.

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Crowe hints at the politics played by magazines like Rolling Stones and theircontribution in rock and roll's decline. But there is a problem, despite the goodscript (the bitter-sweet moments of hilarious heartache), casting and some sparklingperformances. The movie reiterates, in a way, what we already knew about the music scenein the '70s. In a bid to humanise the period, it also ends up softening the impacthard rock had on a generation.

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